imaginary unit
The imaginary unit . Any imaginary number
may be written as , . Any complex number
may be written as , .
Note that there are two complex square roots of (i.e. the two solutions to the equation in ), so there is always some ambiguity in which of these we choose to call “” and which we call “”, though this has little bearing on any applications of complex numbers.
In physics and some engineering fields, the symbol is used for the imaginary unit.